No app, no entry: How the digital world is failing the non tech-savvy | Hacker News Reader

No app, no entry: How the digital world is failing the non tech-savvy

theguardian.com

122 pointsrbanffy286 comments

What frustrates me is how fragile this can quickly become.

I recently was traveling with my 7 year old daughter on public transit, and her card was denied... something was wrong with the 'kids free travel' product loaded on her card. Since her card is actually issued by a train company, I had to login to their website. Since I hadn't logged into their site (as her) in a while, I had to verify my account with a password reset link. The site then sends a create password link to HER email (they would not let me use my email since I was already a user), which I had also not used in a while, so I needed to answer some security questions. The email was severely delayed so cue lots of refreshing. I then had to 'pick up' the product at a terminal in the back of the bus, thankfully this bus had a working one, and then 'check in' at the front.

Thankfully it was a long bus ride but the driver was clear I would need to pay if I couldn't arrange it. This is all totally insane as kids ride free and you don't need an RFID card to see that at 7 year old is under 14. And the worst part is that since it's a bus pass loaded on a train card linked to an email address you need to access on your mobile phone... there is just no accountability.

A similar event happened when my bank just decided I couldn't login since I accidentally used a VPN once, with no error message. Congrats, you won the lottery, you get to play the 3 hour call support game.

If you're technically illiterate, disabled, poor, or have little time, you just can't play these games with companies and are totally screwed.

The biggest problem is mediocre business people at all these companies for whom digitalization means copy-pasting the order process from an e-commerce site. I want to see a museum, why ask me for 8 different fields of data you won’t use ever?

Taking the example of the transit card, a simple login with the card number (in your hand) and a PIN number (in your head) should suffice to view card status and order a new balance top up (without storing CC numbers). Same as when you do a top up in a 7-11 with cash. Just don’t show any confidential information or hide those under an additional authentication request.

Many mediocre companies and organizations bought the “data is money” mantra and soak up useless information they will never use but make their clients life difficult for it.

I just keep 3 fake personas in Bitwarden and roll with them for these services.

It is also plausible that since these businesses are unlikely to have their own software development capability, they outsource the job to providers that are experienced at bringing up e-commerce sites and simply apply a project template without much thought.

Also possible the providers have a side business selling the data their hapless customers are collecting.

My take is we're seeing the same sort of abuses and risk that we had with credit reporting agencies. And we need the same sorts of regulation. And those rules need to be onerous enough that most companies will try hard to stay out from under them.

Or, worse, build a marginally competent completely bespoke website on an ancient toolset they are comfortable with and that’s impossible to maintain or integrate with anything that wasn’t part of the original specs.

> This is all totally insane as kids ride free and you don't need an RFID card to see that at 7 year old is under 14. And the worst part is that since it's a bus pass loaded on a train card linked to an email address you need to access on your mobile phone... there is just no accountability.

Sounds like the person who should be held accountable is the driver. They should have just let her on, or if they're going to dodge accountability, they should do it by raising the problem to their management, or at least promised they will and given you a phone number/email address or something.

> they should do it by raising the problem to their management

Unfortunately, many people on immigrant visas can’t afford to raise problems to their management and risk getting fired for being “troublemakers”

your bank story reminds me of an issue friends of mine ran into. their bank website has a section about security where they helpfully show the finger print of the tls key of the online banking website. except, it's wrong or outdated. so my friend called the bank, because the instructions even said so: if this key doesn't match, then do call the bank. he did, and promptly got his bank account locked, because obviously the problem must be on his end (his computer could be compromised), and not on the banks side. he had to walk into the local bank branch to resolve the issue in person.

Seeing more of this at museums and institutions as well which is really disheartening.

Gone are the days where you could pay at the door. Now you must go to their website and fill out a long string of forms and manually type in your credit card number, all so you can get a QR code and wait even longer to enter.

Or go to a restaurant and use your phone to scan a QR code to read their PDF menu on your phone.

Once a refuge from always-connected society, restaurants and museums now require it and I'm finding myself not returning to these places.

I usually hate the cliche "vote with your wallet" solution, but in this case, it's the right way. Now is the time, while this garbage is still trying to get a foothold and there are still many alternatives that do not treat their customers like shit. Loudly refuse to do business with those companies that require unnecessary technology, and complain to the right people. Not the faces behind the counter making minimum wage.

I don't want to victim blame, but the elderly couple in the article should know better. Isn't Ryanair notorious for their shittiness to customers? We should stop dealing with shitty companies just to save $10.

The issue is we want restaurants and museums. If we vote with our wallet and boycott than they will look at it as a disinterest in the venue and not a failure of their IT team.

You need to tell them why. "I'm not visiting your museum because you demand the use of an app. I want to pay cash for admission at the door"

If you happen to be disabled, and cannot use a mobile app (most do a woeful job with accessibility and even if they don't, some people just cannot use the devices), threaten an ADA lawsuit.

This is the right way, only I would reword it to “I want to visit your museum but I’m unable to use the app due to disability, would you mind taking cash or debit?”.

Try not to start conversations in the negative. You’ll get a lot farther.

Yes, and demand alternatives. I went to an urgent care clinic last year, they wanted me to provide all my info on an app using my phone. I refused, said give me a clipboard. They were reluctant but eventually agreed.

Restaurants, just screw them if they demand apps. No restaurant is that good, and across the board the apps make the ordering experience much worse.

I can call Dominos and say "I'd like a large pepperoni pizza for carryout," give them my name, and be done before the app finishes loading and showing all its promo/coupon deals.

So yes, do business with companies that still have some vague notion of what customer service is. I have stopped expecting businesses to exceed my expectations (used to be the norm for most) but it's nice when it happens and they will definitely get my business again.

Ryanair is sufficiently bad that, as it's the only airline flying from where I live to where most of my friends live in the UK, I am likely to use the train next time.

Last time I used them, mass-cancellations from 1cm of snow combined with the next alternative flights being a week later, meant that I had to get home via a combination of ferry and train.

From Stansted to Berlin.

(I'm glad work was understanding).

> I don't want to victim blame, but the elderly couple in the article should know better. Isn't Ryanair notorious for their shittiness to customers? We should stop dealing with shitty companies just to save $10.

In defence of RyanAir, they are upfront end honest about this and you know what you're getting with them. Whether you think it's a good deal is a subjective matter you can decide for yourself, but I do think it's a fair deal.

That said, I would have used my discretion as a RyanAir employee here: the heavy fee is to encourage people to not "lazy out", which is clearly not what happened here.

It is only shitty for people who haven't learned how to use email. Saving $10 in exchange for using email is a great deal for most.

I think in this case the poor option is using Ryanair at all.

That's kinda the problem with the current consumer capitalism destruction of life support systems. Everyone has principles, until they look at the price tags and just chose the cheapest option. And it's perverse because for most people budgeting is a matter of survival.

So we're stuck in this death spiral where only companies that find ways to exploit us and the ecosystems survive, and even tho we know this, we can only patronize companies that exploit us and the ecosystems because the ones that don't are a luxury/lifestyle signaling tool for the affluent.

I don't see any way out. The current civilization paradigm will crash and burn and only then something different will emerge.

This has not been my experience. Paying for admission to museums/sporting events I apple pay from safari on my phone then am presented with a QR or a pass to add to my apple wallet. It's really nice and I much prefer it to standing in line.

One day or an other, your proprietary pocket tracker and his mandatory connectivity will fail. What if the device is broken (yah, go buy another) ? What if the upstream service don't work ? What if the GSM network is locally in maintenance ? Overall, why should we require obsolete-when-bought, extremely costly and polluting locked-down devices you don't even control to access public places ?

So why, any concrete response capable of holding up in practice ?

Not to discount the other issues, but apple wallet being offline is one of my favorite features and side-steps many of the issues related to connectivity of bandwidth issues when you're at a large event/venue.

It would be much better to have varied and robust options though.

Glad this feature works for you.

What works for me, if I need to pay something: I use my credit card (contactless under 50, over I need to type a code) or some bills which both are in my physical wallet (protected against rfid, it just looks as a normal wallet).

I don't see any benefits adding third parties to the mix apart the fashion of "Oh yeah I can pay with my tracker watch".

I just see that as really pathetic.

no turn it around

your phone just broke/stolen/lost, do you forfeit your right to enter these places and use their services some of which might be "essential"?

This. Apart from not wanting to be tethered to my phone 24/7, I don't like that it is a single point of failure. It has replaced our wallets and then some. The most terrifying prospect to me is governments that want to switch to digital IDs. No thanks. I don't need to lose access to existence just because my battery died or I forgot my phone at home.

> I don't like that it is a single point of failure. It has replaced our wallets and then some

I also have a cellular Apple Watch that also has a copy of my digital wallet....

And once these devices become required for participation in society, is the government going to issue free phones and watches to everyone who can't afford them, or are they going to become yet another burden suffered disproportionately by the poor, just like car ownership?

> is the government going to issue free phones and watches to everyone who can't afford them

Yes

https://www.dmas.virginia.gov/media/1252/lifeline-telephone-...

And 94% of the homeless have cell phones. I would assume that the penetration of cell phones among the poor and not homeless would be higher.

https://priceschool.usc.edu/news/homeless-los-angeles-cell-p....

Aren't these preloaded with crap/scamware by shady providers?

cool story bro. You must be wealthy

I've never been to such an event where using your smartphone to pay was mandatory, it's usually just much faster and more convenient.

At many smaller venues, a credit card (or tap-to-pay) is required, and I'm 100% in favor of that. We should be doing more to help provide unbanked people with credit cards. Requiring small businesses to deal with cash is increasingly a burden; cashless enables them to save a lot of time and money.

This is the wrong approach, because the laws around payment cards require they be strongly linked to ID, allowing point and click shutdown/freezing of anyone's ability to transact.

When you can't pay a lawyer, and you can't pay a taxi to get to your lawyer, and you can't buy food, and it's all because the government pointed a finger without evidence, prior to trial, the system is a bad one.

The ability to use cash must be preserved. You really don't want to live in the world where the only payments are the ones the government explicitly allows.

I see it as similar to what happens when your credit card gets messed up or won't read anymore. It's a similar level of inconvenience.

That said, I have found it easier to replace a phone on short notice than a card. Banks seem to want to do everything through the mail, where I can walk into any carriers store and walk out with a replacement device the same day.

In the future, how does one pay to replace a lost device at the store after losing the device that is the exclusive holder of all your payment details, as well as the exclusive holder of all the credentials to all your accounts?

No turn it around, you lose the piece of paper saying you have a yearly pass, do you forfeit your right to enter these places?

Maybe, yes. Lose that piece of paper and you forfeit your right to enter that concert...

...but lose that piece of paper and you haven't also forfeited your right to access your hotel room, to catch the plane back home, to pay for your parking space where you left your car, to take public transport, to enter your gym...

I agree with you in principle, but one of the problems is that some exhibitions are so popular that you really have to book weeks in advance if you want to get in.

Case in point: A friend suggested the biggest ever Yayoi Kusama exhibition in Manchester[0], which I relayed to my girlfriend because we would be in the city 3 weeks later.

She sent me a frantic sms Get Tickets Now! since the exhibition was sold out weeks in advance.

And that's an issue you see with a lot of popular exhibitions. You can't just walk into a David Hockney exhibition at Centre Pompidou on a whim, because the time slots are sold out for weeks in advance.

That may not be fair and super inconvenient if you don't book far in advance. But popular exhibitions in big cities are so overwhelmed by visitors that there's really no other way than selling time slots well in advance.

The Kusama exhibition was totally worth it. But we wouldn't have stood a chance if we hadn't organized the tickets weeks before the visit.

I think the insistence on smart phones for basic services is much worse than asking the public to organize a museum visit well in advance if the exhibition is super popular.

[0] https://factoryinternational.org/whats-on/yayoi-kusama-you-m...

I've been to a lot of venues where that's the preferred option.

I recently took my kids to the county fair. There was a big line of people waiting to buy tickets, and a short line for ticket holders.

We went to the line of ticket holders, I popped up the website, and thanks to browser autofill, I completed the transaction in less than a minute, and we had our tickets by the time we reached the front of the line.

I 100% agree that this shouldn't be the only option. But I think it's a great alternative, and for many events it makes sense for it to be the default option.

Yeah, which is stupid

Museums could have a booth that takes cash/card and prints the tkts instead of a random/poorly maintained website that'll do who knows what to you CC number (which probably costs more than having the person selling tkts)

>Or go to a restaurant and use your phone to scan a QR code to read their PDF menu on your phone.

Don't worry, they will have paper copies if you don't have a phone or are insistent you want to handle a grubby, contaminated piece of paper before you eat your meal.

If there's a concern about grubby contamination, that bridge was burned when the diner decided to go out to a restaurant.

Indeed. If the menu bothers you, better hope you don't catch a glimpse of the kitchen.

Not everyone has paper copies and if I’m going out to dinner with my wife the last thing we want to do is pull our phones out and figure out a pdf menu

How much should museums waste on customer service staff to take your money? And security staff for managing the queues?

Right? What next, ramps for wheelchair users? /s

In all seriousness, there is a point to be made about equity at a minimal viable level, and if you don’t want to enable access for everyone, you’re not permitted to operate. Very similar to how some jurisdictions have outlawed not accepting cash (because this policy impacts the unbanked, underbanked, and low income disproportionately). Streamlining, efficiencies, and improved experiences via digital delivery are welcome, but once you start tiptoeing into disenfranchising cohorts by doing so (even unintentionally), that’s where regulation comes in.

“You should just get a smartphone” is an unreasonable position to take and policy should actively discourage outcomes based on that position. It’s an accessibility and “fail safe|gracefully” issue.

> because this policy impacts the unbanked, underbanked, and low income disproportionately

Imagine the absurdity of forcing banks to universally provide what ended up being an essential service by their own design?

> “You should just get a smartphone” is an unreasonable position to take and policy should actively discourage outcomes based on that position. It’s an accessibility and “fail safe|gracefully” issue.

Is you must have an ID to get on plane also unreasonable? A modern smart phone (at least an iPhone) has all sorts of affordances that make life easier for the disabled.

> you must have an ID to get on plane

You don’t. You can show up at a TSA checkpoint without ID and they’ll identity proof you on the spot. As an identity nerd, I’ve done it just to try it to experience and confirm the TSA’s process. Next time you pass through a checkpoint, ask!

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/frequently-asked-questions/i-forg...

With that said, a physical credential and a smartphone are wildly different from an accessibility perspective. You can get a REAL ID compliant state credential for under $100. Poor comparison.

I actually think it's unreasonable, and it never used to be required for a domestic flight. If you had a ticket, you could get on the plane. Same as trains and buses still work at least in most places.

Yes, of course - an iphone is so much cheaper and easier to use than a passport or a paper boarding pass.

Wow, a $1000 dollar phone is cheaper than carrying a paper document? I guess that logic escapes me.

I meant it to be sarcasm, obviously failed

Sarcasm fails sometimes because there are indeed some people that genuinely hold such ridiculous views.

Yeah sarcasm generally fails. Sometimes I put <sarcasm>...</sarcasm> :)

A brand new iPhone can be purchased for as little as $429.

That's the problem, they haven't changed staffing. Customer service is still there. Staff for managing queues is still there. The wait has increased, and hasn't decreased the need for staff.

Presumably this is all done so they can get a verified email address for marketing purposes, as proof of entry only arrives via email.

They still have the same customer service staff, but they're now just scanning your QR code instead of taking cash.

And security staff and queue management is always going to be needed if the place is large and crowded.

The time it takes a scan a code is a lot less than ringing up a transaction.

Yes, but the time it takes the visitor to get a QR code is a lot more than ringing up a transaction. The museum has offloaded work on the visitor and this is not acceptable. The visitor, after all, is the one paying the bill.

Before that the phone system offloaded work to their subscribers, who now needed to listen to and understand the various tones (dial, ringing, busy) and remember phone numbers.

when everything is perfect first time maybe.

> waste on customer service

I hate to say it but there needs to be some regulation about customer service, ie not allowing companies to not provide it by pawning people off on digital solutions. So many businesses are only viable because they don't provide customer support, and I don't think that's un society's interest.

Make those who want it pay for it then, like with Ryanair.

Neither one of those roles has become obsolete with the introduction of said apps, I wouldn't even say there's any difference in staffing requirements. You've simply replaced one problem with another, instead of simply taking your money, the worker now has to figure out why the app doesn't accept your card/phone/address/etc which is arguably much more time consuming.

I don't think this is really an issue, but even if you do it's trivially solvable. Vending machines have [somewhat surprisingly] been around for hundreds of years. Single slot generic items, like generic tickets, could easily be 'automated' by a vending machine. Few to no places do this because it's not a meaningful bottle-neck or labor issue.

Isn't the entire point of a museum customer service? What else are they doing other than preserving the stuff? Isn't a museum with bad customer service more properly called a "warehouse"?

So long as they are getting my tax money, as much as I want.

What's wrong with QR codes for restaurant menus? Here are the pros I can come up with off the top of my head:

- Restaurants can experiment with more food options and more frequent updates to their menu

- Real time info on what's in stock

- Cuts out the cost of having to constantly reprint the menu

- Easier for customers to find the menu online when searching for restaurants (huge issue pre-COVID)

What are the actual downsides? Sure, there may be a tiny fraction of people without a smartphone, but they're likely accompanied by someone who does have one. Despite that, restaurants would likely keep a few physical menus on-hand.

In addition to all the other downsides listed, here's another more basic one: I don't want to order food from a smartphone!

If I wanted to push a button and get food, I'd eat out of a vending machine or order with DoorDash. One of the reasons I go into a restaurant or some other meatspace "event" is to escape technology for a tiny bit of time and enjoy life. I want to sit down in a comfortable place, enjoy a conversation with my family, or bask in the ambience of the restaurant. I want to have a pleasant, human interaction with a human server. With these digital-only menus, now I'm yet again pulling out my smartphone and scrolling-scrolling-scrolling. Sorry, due to work I've got screens blasting at me for hours every day. I'm not going to go out in the evening to look at another screen.

The problem is that most of the time a "QR Code Menu" means a QR code pointing to a PDF hosted on Google Drive or alike, a digitized version of a paper menu which was never meant to be read on tiny phone screens and is a pain to read with no reflow. You have to squint at your screen to figure out what you want, and then the rest of the process is the same, someone comes down and takes your order.

What you presumably mean by "QR Code Menu" is a QR code pointing to a website where the content is optimized for screens and perhaps interactive, allowing you to order from your table without involving wait staff and thus streamlining the entire ordering process for you and the restaurant.

So what people actually have a problem with is shitty implementations, not the idea of "QR Code Menus"? Why don't they just say so?

If 95% of all practical implementations of a concept are bad implementations then I don't have a good idea implemented badly. What I have instead is an idea that fails to work when faced with the real world. I'd say it's warranted to call that "a bad idea".

Don't be intentionally obtuse. Reframing the parent comment as "the _only_ concern (all) people have is poor QR code menu implementations" is disingenuous and myopic.

Because they're talking about their experiences with QR Code Menus, the majority of which are the way I described them.

A major con for me is that I don’t want to get my phone out. If I use my phone to read the menu I’m also seeing notifications, they may distract me even if only by making me think about them. I’d rather just not check my phone for the duration of the meal.

Also I have friends and relatives who have never owned a smartphone, some who would be essentially unable to do so.

That said, another benefit is more scope for accessibility. I would bet that most restaurant sites are terrible for accessibility, but implementing screen reader or large font support would apply everywhere, whereas I’d also bet that most restaurant never have braille or large print menus.

>If I use my phone to read the menu I’m also seeing notifications, they may distract me even if only by making me think about them.

This is my concern as well. When someone is at a table with people, put the damn phone away and actually be present for those around you.

QR code menus make "phones out" the default state of a table. So of course people will get distracted and split their attention between notifications and those around them.

> If I use my phone to read the menu I’m also seeing notifications

You can turn on do not disturb until you leave the current location on iOS. I do that a lot. You have all of the tools you need. It's like someone complaining that the sun is too bright when they have their cap turned backwards and their shades on top of their head.

We have the tools, but QR code menus override the most basic tool – keeping my phone in my pocket. When I have to take my phone out and haven't pre-planned by switching to DND, I'm likely to see notifications.

It's like complaining that the sun is too bright after deciding to stay indoors and consequently not bringing a hat, but then being forced to go outside.

Once again it seems like you want me to inconvenience myself because you don't want to make the effort.

> It's like complaining that the sun is too bright after deciding to stay indoors and consequently not bringing a hat, but then being forced to go outside.

You really didn't know that in 2023 you might have to use a QR code to see a menu? That's like going to Seattle and being surprised that it started raining.

I'm not from Seattle or the US so don't know that stereotype. In the same way, I don't expect restaurants to use QR codes for menus because it's fairly rare in my experience, so no I would not plan for it.

I prefer it when venues like restaurants design for all and don't expect knowledge of local customs.

> Once again it seems like you want me to inconvenience myself because you don't want to make the effort.

This is not the conclusion most would draw from this. If anything it seems fairly well understood that QR menus are mostly beneficial for restaurants not diners.

If I open Scarface's Pork, Beef and Spirits should I be forced to design my restaurant for people who have a religious conviction against eating beef and pork?

> It's like someone complaining that the sun is to bright when they have their cap turned backwards and their shades on top of their head.

It's more like you're saying that it shouldn't be a problem to require someone to stare directly into the sun because they should have brought eclipse glasses and be fine with using them

If that were the case, 95% of the US population would be going blind.

It amazes me how many people are railing against technology while posting on HN...

It amazes me that you cannot seem to realise that many people have problems with the inappropriate uses of technologies.

And they are free to make choices and accept the inconveniences that come with those choices.

I’m sure people complained about those horseless carriages years after cars became mainstream

People are complaining about cars now. Walkable cities and bike lanes are the fashionable wave in urbanism.

why do you think that so many people here are proposing that the choices you suggest are toxic? because they are stupid?

Well, if you stay in the HN bubble you would think that in normal life, people are complaining that they can't run Linux on AirPods....

But in the real world, smart phone penetration is 95%, including 94$ of the homeless (I posted a citation earlier)

> why do you think that so many people here are proposing that the choices you suggest are toxic?

People also think that alcohol sales shouldn't happen on Sunday, and all other crazy stuff. I'm simply suggesting that if your choices are out of the society's norms, it's not society's responsibility to make affordances for you.

somethings that you don't seem to understand:

- this is not entirely about the homeless

- this is not entirely about the elderly

it is about companies using technology badly - something you either support or can't recognise.

If we made a law forbidding companies from using software badly, every single SaaS business would disappear.

> it is about companies using technology badly - something you either support or can't recognise.

Would you believe that my wife and I refuse to use American Airlines partially because the app and the website is so bad? I stay away from a lot of services, software and hardware because of a bad user experiences.

- Paper menus are much easier to browse.

- Lots of restaurants have no WiFi and may also have poor cell reception for certain networks. This either makes the menu slow to access or impossible to access.

- I shouldn’t have to pass my phone around the table to people who can’t access the online menu. That slows everything down and most people don’t want others on their phones anyway.

- When they throw in payment with their online menu there are inevitably issues. I’ve had this fail numerous times (money taken, order didn’t go through).

- Lots of restaurants have PDF menus designed for a computer screen. They’re awful to browse on a phone.

I find menus on phones harder to read. And it just feels annoying to have everyone’s face in their phones at a meal.

I have no issue with it being default, but since covid ended, the places that still use qr menus seem not to have paper menus on hand.

It’s not the end of the world but it makes your restaurant feel cheap.

Still 100 times better than places that make you order on your phone.

Remind me in 20 years when the majority of HN loses their near vision and their 3 month old prescription isn't working.

The future is going to be hysterical as the US ages out.

I'm already there. I cannot read my phone without glasses. And I often misplace my glasses, or leave the house without them.

We need to bring the monocle back. Very portable.

The usual downside is the menu was designed to be printed and not viewed on a screen that is 1/4 or less the size.

So I see part of the drink menu horizontally and vertically. Another example: Non-alcoholic is on the "back" of the menu but wine is on the "front".

And now the restaurant needs to hire a UX designer.

Printing costs so little that you can do completely unique menus for each patron for less than a full time software engineer.

> What are the actual downsides?

Surveillance. For those of us who still care, that is.

It's not just the 'non tech-savvy' that are failed by this, it is all of us. I don't want to be required to take my smartphone everywhere I go and to make sure the battery doesn't die. There is no excuse for it in most cases. And as for Ryanair requiring a printout, that's just a way of forcing users to pay more. When I last flew with SAS from Trondheim, many years ago there were no check-in staff. I put the credit card I had used to book the ticket with in a reader, it spat out a label that I attached to my bag which I then placed on the belt. I used the same card to gain entry to air side. I used the same card to enter the corral by the actual gate. Finally when boarding there was a person there to attend to any problems and that was it. No need for apps, no paper.

These systems also regularly fail for travellers who don't fit the assumptions developers make about users. For instance the app might not be available on the app store for foreign users, or might require a local phone number, or might enforce a format that does not match the user's data.

They frequently fail for groups who complete a task together, or people who act on behalf of someone else.

The parking app is the worst, IMHO. I can see the parking space but I have to figure out which parking app works with this particular lot and then hope I don't get a ticket.

I work in tech as a software engineer, and even I resent the assumption that I have a smart phone and want to use it as a single point of failure for absolutely everything.

Even my local gas company, after switching to paperless billing, now requires me to login to their ridiculous web app, which uses Okta and often gives me problems trying to sign in, just to be able to access my stupid bill. And this ridiculous web app has so many pointless "features" and annoyances. If I want to switch back to being mailed my bill like a normal sane person (yes I'm showing my age) I can't do this online but have to phone them, jump through hoops and pay an outlandish fee. I know paper and mail costs money, but how much did the contractors who built that pointless web app charge?

But my bank also seems to be encouraging its customers to do mobile online banking more and more. Which I don't want to do. I do online banking, but I don't like nor trust smart phones enough to want to use it for something as critical as banking.

TicketMaster has also switched to mobile tickets by default. Given how uptight most events are about cell phones my wife and I often opt to leave ours at home when attending shows. At least they still allow you to pay for a print ticket (for now).

Now get off my lawn.

The conspiracy theorist in me believes that adding all these pointless features is a government ploy to keep Product Owners employed… /s

Really, “You give me electricity,I give you money.” Via Direct Debit. How many menus you need in your web? I log in once every 2 years… why force me to download a crappy app?

I recently saw an advertisement for a comedy show that would let you bring your smart phone but required that it be stored in a pouch that prevented use. If you really need it, there would be "stations" available where the pouch could be removed. I assume that once the show ended there would also be a massive line to unlock and remove these pouches.

As opposed to, say, a paper ticket and requiring people to leave their phones at home. Is that really such an outlandish request?

https://www.overyondr.com/howitworks

>Is that really such an outlandish request?

Yes? Do you not see any of the endless ways that could be an instant deal-breaker. Anyone who is relying on ride-share apps to get there or get back; anyone driving who wants to use their phone for navigation (or even someone walking there!) or has to use an app to pay for parking; even people using public transit benefit from being able to look up schedules or get updates.

So yes, I do consider it absolutely an outlandish request to require that people leave their phones at home.

I don't know... I had to use an app to get into a concert not too long ago, and the company screwed up and there was no way of fixing it (basically my id information is correct due to a big in their system).

What upsets me is there's all sorts of legitimate reasons for not wanting to use a particular app for something that could be done differently. Everything should have multiple methods of entry for many reasons.

One problem going back to the 80s are companies leveraging tech to exert unreasonable control over access. This seems like another version of that, extended into other domains.

Really glad to see this getting traction outside of our lil bubble here.

I've tried twice to go without a smartphone in the last year or so (once due to stolen-phone-necessity, the other just a social experiment) and it was a GIANT PITA each time.

Even just a Saturday night downtown... parking, restaurant, show ticket... each part more or less NOT doable without a smartphone

I finally got one this year (I'm 36, but realized this stuff was nonsense on an iPaq) just to do away with potatophone service and a landline that only worked some of the time. I still mostly use it as a phone. Maybe the pervasive need for vendor smartphone applications just hasn't reached anywhere I go, but I do travel for work a fair bit.

Is this just, again, something that's prevalent outside the USA?

EDIT: comment further down did remind me that I think someone in our group had to use some parking app last time we were in Cambridge, MA.

Yeah this was all in US. Parking apps, ticket apps, payment apps, etc etc

Europe is way more tech-ified in this regards, they don't get to be off the hook this time

> I've tried twice to go without a smartphone in the last year or so...

Go where? Airport? Somewhere else?

I still prefer printing out tickets. I've just seen tech fail so often, or had to deal with bad tech so often, that I'd rather have a fallback for when (not if) it breaks.

If you paid with a credit card then there is absolutely no need for a paper ticket; inspectors, etc., can just use a card reader to connect you to the record of you paying.

by "go without" I meant, just not have/use a smartphone in the context of my daily life.

I go to a lot of concerts and printing tickets is not even an option anymore for most of them.

The last 2 or 3 times I've been at a local restaurant with friends, the sequence has been:

- Waitress points us to the QR code to get to the menu

- Everybody pulls out a smart phone

- After a minute or three of trying to deal with their el-crapo on-line menu via a tiny screen, everybody asks for real menus. (Which are at least 8.5"x11" - bigger than even an iPad Pro screen - and decently laid out and readable.)

- We notice that there's considerably more conversation than when we were squinting at their web menu

I've stopped eating at places that require QR codes. The only advantage is when you can select the items in the app and pay for it all in that one place. It's quite useful for things like Dim Sum where you're getting lots of small things over a longer period of time.

More frequently, there's that one old man yells at crowd person who insists on a paper menu and makes things uncomfortable for everyone. But I also get it.

If something like 95% of your customers could manage a step or two at the entrance , society has still decided you should build a ramp or install a lift - and law has codified that.

Not needing an app for everything is, I think, one of the next big accessibility issues that will at some point come to a courthouse near you.

This might depend on your country whether it's allowed and/or possible, but it's really not that hard technically to hook up a tablet, a contactless card reader, and a roll printer that can produce QR codes.

This article is mostly about just the need for a smartphone, not specifically about apps. But I specifically hate all the apps! I don’t want to download a Taco Bell app to order food or whatever. Just let me use a website that works reasonably well on a phone and doesn’t request a bunch of permissions I don’t want to grant.

Fast food in particular is such a weird concept to need an app. But Chick-fil-a's app is so much better than all the others they give the concept hope. Combined with their great service, the app is legitimately faster than a Drive Thru. Can't say the same of McDonalds.

Agreed! What can we do about this? I'm an advocate for web over app, but that has it's own downsides

You can order from the Taco Bell mobile website.

I don’t eat Taco Bell. I’m talking about the app deluge in general and I guess I chose a bad example.

If you can’t even find an example then it’s probably not that much of an app deluge.

Almost everyone has some kind of decent mobile site outside of the category of social media (and to be honest many of the social media sites like Facebook and YouTube have pretty excellent mobile sites).

I’m struggling to think of a major store or service that forces you to use an app, especially if you exclude Apple’s walled garden (then again, there is iCloud.com).

It's not just failing the non-tech savvy.

What about those of us who are tech savvy enough to not want to install every random shitty untrustworthy company's software on our pocket computer just to pay for something, rent a bike, use an event ticket etc etc.

You are then sending the (not) signal that you are poor.

Can you explain further? I don't really understand your comment

From a marketing perspective, there's zero difference between someone who cannot afford a smartphone and someone who does not use one out of principle.

Those who are tech savvy enough would use some kind of sandboxing solution for untrusted yet necessary apps.

And just how many "escape the sandbox" security holes have been found in major smartphone OS's, in just the past year?

On PCs we blame users for opening attachments from phishing emails, some of them cleverly crafted.

On phones we call anyone who balks at scanning random QR codes and and installing shitty parking apps they'll use once conspiracy nut weirdos.

On a secure OS like e/OS or Graphene? Not many I'd wager. And you can use something like Insular[0] for extra piece of mind.

Besides, these shifty apps are not trying to root your phone, just to, in the worst case, send back data they should, or shouldn't even have access to.

[0]https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.oasisfeng.island.fdroid/

This is the solution I've chosen as well. But you need to realize this is a high bar to clear, even in the tech community. Researching, buying the correct phone model, installing a user-representing distribution, and then staying on that distributions' device upgrade treadmill all take time and effort. It would be best described as a hobby, and unfortunately nobody has the time and effort to do all the hobbies they'd like. (I've also got a bunch of "smart" devices sitting around effectively unutilized because Home Assistant crapped the bed 5 years ago and I haven't had time to set up something new)

Furthermore all of the secure Android distributions are community projects spearheaded by one or two developers. They could easily fall by the wayside tomorrow (eg CopperheadOS). It's nowhere near a self-sustaining off the shelf solution, despite how easy it seems once you actually do it.

Also the looming threat of remote attestation could destroy using secure Android distributions for consumer apps in the blink of an eye. And it's not like the venues that went digital only will then go back to having a paper option if the secure option has disappears.

In short, it's great to proselytize and grow the number of people interested in secure phone operating systems. But it's so far from being a prescriptive model to imply that people who haven't done so deserve what they get.

You don't have to go as far as using a specific rom. There are plenty of much easier sandboxxing solutions available. All that's required is that a tech savvy user use one. Any one.

You do realize that's a worse message, right?

"Use GrapheneOS" is an easy answer, capable of being implemented in two weekends by any intermediate computer user, once they decide to take it on.

Figuring out what "easier sandboxing solutions" are actually secure and aren't just snake oil is a much taller order. Especially with the way folk security (mis)advice gets repeated in forums, and the tendency for security amateurs to think more customization choices implies more security.

> Figuring out what "easier sandboxing solutions" are actually secure and aren't just snake oil is a much taller order.

It shouldn't be for a tech savvy user. I'm sure there are plenty of articles covering this from reputable sources.

> It shouldn't be for a tech savvy user. I'm sure there are plenty of articles covering this from reputable sources.

I'm sorry, but this reads as straight up Dunning-Kruger. Care to suggest any articles about these "easier sandboxing solutions" ? Popular articles on Android security are just as likely to rot your brain as they are to inform you. Remember that trend of "task killers" ?

If you were referring to your earlier link to Island - using Android Work Profiles on its own adds some security properties, but it's nowhere near comprehensive enough to assume your device now represents you.

The problem is that security is essentially a prove-a-negative endeavor. You can add "solutions" and configure things all day long for a simulation of making things more secure (see also: "antivirus"). But it's only by moving up to a higher context can you see/fix the holes.

Witness that even with Graphene on Pixel, you still have the baseband processor doing who-knows-what behind the scenes, and the application processor likely has vulnerabilities to it (this is seemingly a step up from the legacy Qualcomm standard where the AP completely trusts the BB, but it's still a black box). It's just one of the best answers we've got right now for a secureish solution that fits in your pocket with a long battery life, and so it's appropriate to recommend it in a consumer security context.

(You also haven't responded to the larger initial point I made, where adoption of these things are really not to the point where we can take them for granted in a societal context)

> I'm sorry, but this reads as straight up Dunning-Kruger.

No offense, but I'm not sure you understand what Dunning-Kruger is if you think that.

> Care to suggest any articles about these "easier sandboxing solutions"

Did you even try searching?

> Popular articles on Android security are just as likely to rot your brain as they are to inform you.

Key words in my original statement: reputable. sources.

I'm sorry, but you seem like you want to argue just for the sake of arguing. You also give off the vibe of being an armchair security expert, and as someone that does security professional as has for my entire career, I'm not really finding you to be credible. Same as someone screaming that security by obscurity doesn't work because they read it somewhere an heard other people say it.

The point was simply that there are decent sandboxing solutions that are easy to find, and will protect you sufficiently from untrusted third party apps that are not trying to root your phone, but trying to exfil as much data as possible. That's it. And that remains true.

Not really interested in discussing this further though, since I don't think this is a productive discussion. Cheers.

I said Dunning-Kruger because you seem to be advocating doing Internet Research and following "reputable" pop suggestions of security solutions. This is the equivalent to rolling your own crypto - anyone can create a system that they themselves are satisfied is secure, and that's effectively what you're doing by mashing up random security apps with a proprietary Android distribution.

These "decent sandboxing solutions" are all just front ends to Android Work Profiles. Trusting Work Profiles on a proprietary distribution is similar to just trusting the proprietary distribution as is - especially when most distributions have blobbed "Play Services" with backdoors into the OS. So in my opinion this isn't a particularly good path to go down to achieve trustable security, just as adding a bunch of band-aids to Microsoft Windows won't get you something trustable.

And really, my overarching point is that the current state of secure user-representing Android is nowhere advanced enough in capabilities, auditing, or adoption to say that anyone can "just" do some things to be protected from the surveillance industry.

> "reputable" pop suggestions

Do you know what reputable means? Then why are you so obviously twisting the meaning of what I am saying to fit your argument?

No, I don't. The word has many meanings, especially these days. And it's doing a lot of work in your argument.

Reputable simply means of good repute. Having good reputation. I.E. being credible and having credibility. In the context of tech savvy users, it wouldn't refer to the 'pop' articles you refer to.

As I said, the word is doing most of the work of your argument. I can totally see someone saying the exact same thing you are, and then pointing to some throwaway article on some popular Android news site and calling it reputable - in an earlier comment you indicated that these reputable articles can be found by "searching", which with how search engines tend to work these days is like the exact opposite of reputable.

And as I've said for the nth time now, you could end this abstract discussion with a link to like anything concrete. I addressed your specific reference to Island and Work Profiles in general, which you have just ignored. I myself use Shelter on Graphene, it has its place. But using Work Profiles on a black box proprietary Android distribution just seems like adding a false sense of security.

> As I said, the word is doing most of the work of your argument.

It's really not. Saying it twice doesn't make it so. You just decided to make an issue of it for some reason.

> then pointing to some throwaway article on some popular Android news site and calling it reputable - in an earlier comment you indicated that these reputable articles can be found by "searching", which with how search engines tend to work these days is like the exact opposite of reputable.

I expect a tech savvy user to understand the difference between a garbage site and a reliable, reputable site.

> And as I've said for the nth time now, you could end this abstract discussion with a link to like anything concrete.

How about you just stop replying? Why keep it going this long when we clearly disagree? I find such behavior baffling. If I wasn't interesting in putting in time to provide links before, given the tone of this discussion, why do you think I would be now?

Throwing out dubious security advice, especially as a lemma for downplaying legitimate concerns, requires backing it up with details. If you don't want to have tedious discussions, the sooner you supply those details the better. FWIW you were the one who said you were going to stop replying, but apparently you care just enough to dig your heels in on the content-free part of your argument, but not enough to actually fill any details of what you're trying to advocate.

I haven't thrown out any dubious security advice. I made a point which seems to have gone over your head, and that you've turned into both a strawman and discussion of semantics. Absurd. And you don't get to dictate the terms of any discussion.

All your comment is showing here is that you need to have the last word and want to argue for the sake of arguing. So have at it. You're no longer worth my time.

And this point that went over my head was? Don't confuse understanding with disagreement.

I started off curious what you might be referring to, if it wasn't just work profiles. I still am. But now I'm mostly just amazed how set you are in arguing some abstract unsubstantiated point, when a simple link could have supported it long ago.

(Also for reference, if someone said "I've read about Covid from a reputable source", what would you think?)

hmm so should I use Insular, or Island, or Shelter? Am I not tech savvy enough if I don't know which of those is more trustworthy/better?

Is the bar for tech savvy so high now that I have to know what fdroid is, and how to install it (since I don't think it is on google play).

Am I only tech savvy if I know what a custom android ROM is and how to install one?

This is getting absurd!

I have better things to do with my life than manage a zoo of shitty apps, so to hell with that. Just because I'm technically capable of spending time on doing something doesn't mean I want to.

Part of the problem is that Android itself is an untrusted app.

The other part of the problem is that SafetyNet means a lot of apps won't work if your system is too weird.

It's not as easy as you make it sound.

You don't need safteynet for these thirdparty apps people are talking about for buying a ticket or whatever.

Not on an iPhone. Do the tech savvy not own iPhones?

Not if they care about privacy and security IMO. At the least the tech savvy would want decent adblocking.

So all iPhone owners are not tech savvy?

The ones that are willing make a choice to use an iPhone despite the limitations, e.g. no ad blocking.

I can't see any tech savvy user for who ad blocking is a priority using an iPhone.

I really like the venues that have two check-in lines, the fast lane that just scans your QR code and the old fashioned one. It works at airports, grocery stores, museums, the DMV, etc.

Got the digital stuff all done beforehand? Good boy, you can go through the quicker line.

Want to do it old school and talk to someone? Fine, here you go, but it's going to take 3x longer.

That system incentivizes the more efficient approach, enticing people to learn the digital ropes so they don't have to wait in line as long. But it also doesn't exclude the people who don't or can't do so.

I found that the "old fashioned" is often faster actually, because most people are in the "QR queue" and the "old fashioned queue" tends to have much fewer people. Plus, I don't need to create an account, unsubscribe from their marketing emails, get twice-yearly ToS update emails, and stuff like that, so I'll save annoyance on that too.

While they're incentivizing me to learn the ropes and be more efficient, I'm secretly incentivizing them either to respect my privacy by accepting cash payments or to compensate me with a discount for giving up some of my personal information. I wonder which of us will learn the ropes sooner.

On a more general note, I prefer to tell people that I'm too old for newfangled stuff like smartphones, because I prefer the reaction of condescending reassurance to the alternative of hostility evoked by saying I've made an informed decision not to own one.

I respect that. I often wish I had the courage/self-discipline to give up my cell phone.

It's only efficient for the company. I have to fill a bunch of forms instead of handing someone money and getting a ticket.

I just do it in the car or whatever so it's more like a quick scan and enter once you're there.

Taken to the extreme, you have membership based check ins like Clear at airports or the Amazon grocery store stuff or any gym that scans your barcode when you go in.

I don't think it's fair to say it's only for the company's benefit. On my own device, autofilling saved info, I'm often faster than the person behind the desk.

I've never had a smartphone and I think the extent to which you need a smartphone is nowadays is overstated. The only things I have ever encountered that I simply could not use was the bikeshare in town and the mothers' nursing stations at certain airports. Restaurants and museums may roll their eyes at me but I have yet to run into one where they couldn't make it work somehow.

The necessity of a computer however is very real, and a credit card is close. I don't think this is great, but I'm glad smartphones aren't there yet.

>> The only things I have ever encountered that I simply could not use was the bikeshare in town and the mothers' nursing stations at certain airports.

The nursing station part of this is appalling. Why is a smartphone necessary for that?!

They are all run by some company "Mamava" who uses the app as a key. Why it's necessary I couldn't say.

I've noticed malls that used to have helpful directories and maps have replaced them with a QR code. In one instance I tried scanning it and found I had no cell signal...

My nephews are growing up with computers, but in a different way from how I did. They are distinctly at the machine's mercy instead of the other way around. The younger of the two desires programming lessons, which I'm ferociously excited to give.

I had a module on this in uni 10 years ago. Sad to see digital poverty still gets no thought.

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I see this more of an issue of User Experience / Service Design than anything else.

Physical check-in means you provide your ID / Passport, and a boarding pass is printed by the check-in staff. Most of the work is hidden from you (the employee enters all numbers, clicks all boxes, etc.) so from a service design perspective it's a simple process. However, it's costly, and requires you to stand in line.

Digital check-in is not on the same level, there's no standard across airlines, not one app to do it all. And the process hasn't been simplified at all, all the work has just been delegated to the user. This is not an issue for tech-savvy people who're used of entering forms and using digital tools, but I still believe it's a poor user experience.

Ideally, you'd want a unified digital solution where all you have to do is click one button, scan the RFD chip in your passport and click check-in.

The solution is NOT to bring back cash and manual check-in counters, but to look at it purely from a service design perspective to make it simple and inclusive. Which I'm sure will benefit everyone in the end.

The problem is that when it works it is so convenient. But a small failure crashes everything. How likely is failure? It probably depends (age, income, mobile coverage, language), but it seems to mostly succeed for most people, which drives the change.

I recently travelled to Glasgow to watch cycling. Flight boarding passes, directions, venue tickets, meeting up with people, doing some work - everything - was on my phone and worked well. I could not imagine how that trip would have been if I had to gather lots of bits of important paper to travel with. The first time our sushi place had a QR code, I balked and asked for a menu, but now I have learned that the sushi experience (ordering small portions as you want and need them) works so much better on mobile than getting a menu and waiting for waiters to return to take an order.

We trade convenience with risk of being in a pickle if things are broken. So far, the convenience is winning. A lot if this is driven by (as implied in OP) young people who are more tech savvy.

The last episode of the last season of "Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is about this.

"What happened to the days when a THING was a THING?!"

Also immediately thought about that episode. I think it is a good sign that the app fatigue is becoming a mainstream topic.

Here, in Brazil, this is becoming more and more common, but in the US it's already an endemic problem for those who don't use tech.

My biggest issue with all this comes to the forced dependency of 3rd party services and ToS agreements to use something totally unrelated to it, along with all the technical issues that, we all know, happens every time. For example, here the federal bank will ask you to install their app trough App/Play store. Since there are still MANY tech illiterate people here, they still have in-person service. But for the majority of people, they will try to force you to use the app. It's a "don't you guys have phones?" issue i see spreading everywhere, but almost nobody complains about it because... it's easier. They don't care about privacy, data collection, none of this, and companies (with government bodies) are taking advantage of this for reasons i rather not speculate about here.

During Covid, i took my first dose of vaccine and the nurse said "check out our Instagram to see the next date of vaccination". "But i don't have a Instagram account or any social media. Is there any official channel, like a .gov website?" i asked, and she shrugged like 'its your problem then'. I walk out of any restaurant that forces you to scan a QR code for the menu, and if possible, i avoid the usage of my phone all together. As long as people are compliant in that behavior, things will only get worse.

> During Covid, i took my first dose of vaccine and the nurse said "check out our Instagram to see the next date of vaccination". "But i don't have a Instagram account or any social media. Is there any official channel, like a .gov website?" i asked, and she shrugged like 'its your problem then'.

When I retire with my tech millions and have lots of spare time, I swear I'm gonna start filing lawsuits for shit like this.

Something I bring up every time this comes up, because it remains true: requiring the use of an app that's only in the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store means you're implicitly requiring everyone to agree to either Google's or Apple's terms of service. Don't want to, or got your account terminated for some inscrutable reason? Well I guess you're not buying tickets/parking your car/renting a bike then!

Many public school districts now use Google services to provide public education, meaning that Google TOS agreement is required to get the things your tax money has already paid for.

Very similar to BEV chargers and their stupid requirements for apps.Those things more does not work than they does (wrong bank account, no internet connection on your phone, sign in email went to spam, charger broken, ...). I am software developer and I am often getting unreasonably hard time with those applications. I can't imagine how regular people are going to cope.

A while ago my mother had issues buying a ticket from the much ridiculed state train company ticketing system[0]. The payment went through, but no ticket was issued. Eventually she had to go an office of theirs and apply for a refund filling out a paper form because the online one required having a ticket id assigned.

I helped her through this, but it was utterly confusing for the both of us.

[0] the frontend files are not minified so it's possible to see what a shitshow it is in all its glory - method names which are partly in English and partly not being but one example.

Can't even park some places around here. Scan something on a post and voila! If you have a smart phone, if it scans, if you have internet connectivity, if you have the app.

Some of us don't install apps willy-nilly. Some of us have phones with no app other than what it came with.

On a somewhat related note, one thing that annoys me is that the self-checkout lanes at my local large supermarket are getting ridiculously long. These were touted to be the end of waiting in line!

I'm more interested in raising the technical savviness of our entire population rather than continuously making things ' backward compatible' for those who aren't yet caught up. We no longer offer infrastructure to ride your horse-drawn carriage through NYC. It doesn't seem far-fetched that eventually, people without a smartphone will be in the extremely small minority.

Accessibility and backwards compatibility are different

For example, we absolutely still offer infrastructure to walk or bike through NYC.

Walking and biking are more (financially) accessible to people than cars. We also support wheelchair access to places.

This is not a tech issue. It is an accessibility issue caused by arguably unnecessary dependencies on tech being asserted

I do agree with you that outside of accessibility issues, we should not limit ourselves to low-tech for the sole sake of backwards compatibility

> We also support wheelchair access to places

As of very recently (9/2021), less than a third of MTA stations were wheelchair accessible. I realize I'm nitpicking your point, but I'm illustrating how awful we are at implementing any of these ideals because we are a selfish society.

> It is an accessibility issue caused by arguably unnecessary dependencies on tech being asserted

I disagree. While the additions may be unnecessary from the point of view that things worked beforehand, technology has increased accessibility for nearly all aspects of life. I think that the benefit greatly outweighs concerns about people who don't yet have access to a smartphone (which is the primary limitation here, right?). Considering how disposable they have become, how ubiquitous wi-fi is, and how vastly $10 smartphones are traded around the globe, I don't see a financial limitation here.

If wheelchair accessibility is not enough, that supports my point. Your argument would be in the ballpark of "Remove the 1/3 support we do have because accessibility should be traded for maximum convenience of the masses and most people are not wheelchair bound"

Financial limitations are only 1 way of creating an accessibility issue

It is not just a dependency on owning a smartphone, but also on having it on you, having it charged, having it up to date, having their app installed, having their app up to date, not having any bugs, and using its processing to handle the transaction.

These are not trivial concerns, and contesting them is not the same as being against new technology.

Where is my government supplied smartphone with free internet and free charging to go along with these requirements? A cheeky question, but not that outlandish

I 1000% support using a smartphone as an OPTION but I disagree with it as a requirement.

How about just the fact that I do not want to show a line of people the brand new phone I have in my pocket because it might make me a target? Or maybe I don't want people around me to know if I'm apple or android, or maybe I have a private background image I don't want to risk being shown, or even just that my phone is in the middle of an update and I can't use it at the moment?

The examples are contrived but my point is that the requirement loses on both ends. I shouldn't need to have it on me, and also it's one of my most personal items that I own and I may not want to take it out in public on demand in order to do activities that have nothing to do with it.

There's no need to create all this management effort when previously I could basically just hand the gate person a $20, show my ID, and walk in.

If they have a smartphone I can borrow when I reach the end of the line to do smartphone stuff for the sake of utilizing new tech then that would be accessible. Requiring me to supply my own and make sure it's compatible with their system and operational at the moment is not.

But the new technology is worse for the user. It doesn't serve the user. This "get with it" attitude is just groveling at the feet of authority. The cage of technology they're telling you to desire is neither inevitable nor cool.

It really needs to stop being socially acceptable for people to stop learning through life.

I’m fine with subsidizing devices for low income people, but this need to retain paper and pay tons extra for staff for the elderly who haven’t learned anything since they were 20 is ridiculous.

Strongly disagree.

I very much so love being tech literate, but it's extremely annoying even if you know technology to just deal with what formerly was an on-site transaction. While it's good many business have ensured that they can work with their usual customers, sometimes it's extremely frustrating to figure out the actual way to use some services, or there are extremely inconsistent handlings of payment for services that you simply can't know until you're trying to make the transaction.

It's not an unusual thought for me to imagine a summer market where some of the vendors take cash only, others only take direct transfers, and even more will only take cards. Online, it's pretty annoying as there is _so_ much spam/scam out there that the major search engines happily return that I would wager even most IT professionals would have an uneasy feeling trying to sort which one is the real site and which are just SEO spammed scams.

I don't think it's about the learning curve, it's about the businesses pushing a lot of their costs onto consumers and expecting them to figure it out, and more and more it's blocking people from doing business with these businesses.

I'm pretty sure there's a more healthy medium than just forcing your customers to deal with the lack of investment into the UX for their businesses. I always get a paper boarding pass along with my electronic one; it only took me one time almost missing a flight to reach this position, because the gate agent decided my electronic boarding pass was fake as they scanned it too fast across the scanner and it couldn't read it, despite me asking them to please try it again. While I was able to figure this one out, it's only because I got lucky enough that the employee working the desk finally got a break from their other duties during boarding to be able to check my situation. I'm pretty sure if there had been anything else that required this person's attention coming up, I would not have made my flight, despite having valid tickets.

Don't blame the individuals here; there are instances when caveat emptor applies, but a lot of ticketing/business is definitely pushing their poor UX problems onto the consumers and just blaming them for not knowing the workflows these businesses use for their operations.

The tech is here to serve me. I am not here to serve the tech. If it makes my life harder, I'm not using it. That's not because I have "stopped learning".

And, frankly, I don't care if it requires the company to have more staff. (They're not "extra" staff, either - they're staff the company had before they tried to shift everything to the phone, and the company hasn't found a way to lay off yet.)

This stance could be somewhat tenable if there were secure smartphones that didn't betray their owners, and if the systems designed around these things weren't so janky and user-hostile (see the comment above about trying to fix some digital problem while on a bus, and having to deal with multiple accounts hassling with "login verification" and associated garbage). In other words, if these information systems could be taken for granted rather than often being a bottomless source of problems and frustration. As it stands it's completely understandable that people don't want to invest themselves into the current environment.

Maybe some people have kept learning and in doing so have learned that malicious apps and non-trustworthy companies are a thing.

Maybe the ignorant people are the ones who will install an app without thinking twice just to park their car or navigate an airport.

It's worthwhile to retain paper as a business continuity strategy in an outage or disaster scenario - e.g. just in case servers or networks are down.

But websites and email are not a new technology. They've been around more than 20 years.

> the presumption is that the elderly remain vigilant to every missive from the online world, when in fact many find it a jungle of scams, junk mail, endless passwords and security risks into which they venture as little as possible.

It's a jungle out there for everyone.

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